Finance committee  It's not the expectation that the government will follow the advice of any one organization, just as the government was not obligated to accept or follow the advice of the round table. These are sources of information on which the government can draw, but ultimately the decision

Finance committee  I think that is an important point. The department itself is the source of thousands of individuals, a large number of scientists, on a wide range of issues. The fact that the round table no longer exists may suggest that there is no more in-house—if you will—within the Governmen

Finance committee  The department does have a wide range of expertise, as was indicated, whether it be scientists on all those issues of water, conservation, greenhouse gas emissions, air pollutions, and those sorts of efforts, and they continue to report out on those kinds of activity. For example

Finance committee  The reality is that some of them do predate the round table, but it's also worth noting that if you look at something like Suzuki, it was founded the same year. It's not only the proliferation. I think it would also be safe to say it's the growing sort of sophistication and focus

Finance committee  I think the issue is that if you look at the range of organizations, some will try to factor economic issues into their overall work. I think Pembina strives to do that. I think a lot of these organizations that are focused on sustainable development try to build that in, for exa

Finance committee  I suppose it does get into terminology questions of “advisory group” versus “think tank” versus “environmental organization”. But I think at the end of the day, the reality is that the kind of work the round table did was often to speak to various participants in the system, to d

Finance committee  Again, I would note there continues to be a regular and open dialogue with many of these groups and that analysis is taken seriously. We look at the work that is done by these organizations. We meet with these organizations. For example, there are very valuable work and analyses

Finance committee  Yes, certainly there are more sources of advice and analysis on our environment now than there was at the time the round table was created.

Finance committee  I would say yes. I'll concede I'm less familiar with probably some of the earlier years of the round table, but I'm sure there would be lots of instances where they were proposing either policy directions that the government of the day was not necessarily pursuing or recommendati

Finance committee  A lot of their assets are going to be very basic things. Frankly, they're not going to have a lot of significant assets. It's really just going to be classic things that they have to run the organization, such as computers, technology, photocopiers, their rental agreements on off

Finance committee  Yes, I think it is. What we've seen in the environmental community has replicated itself across universities. This is obviously going to be multidisciplinary in terms of environmental issues and environmental economics, and the bridge between the two.

Finance committee  I'll speak to the issue of the kind of work these organizations do. I think it is safe to say that we in the policy world examine their work, analyze it, take note of it, and take note of it to ministers, etc., as appropriate. We meet with these organizations on a variety of issu

Finance committee  I believe it was 1988.

Finance committee  There are, I believe, two remaining reports to come forward from the round table. The first has to do with a reference from the Minister of the Environment asking the round table to examine provincial and territorial approaches to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The second is

Finance committee  As the minister has indicated, it has always welcomed the historic work of the round table on a wide variety of issues. The reality is that the exact kind of analysis of trying to bring together sustainable development—i.e., the marriage of meeting economic and environmental goal